


Dwell on dreams and forget to live

by RRRobin



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Pre-Slash, Temporary Character Death, right in the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 09:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RRRobin/pseuds/RRRobin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.”  ― Marcel Proust</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To Sleep Perchance to Dream

**Author's Note:**

> This is all part of an initiative to get me writing and posting without second guessing myself too much.

Derek Hale is lost. 

He’s running through the woods behind his house, running away from the alpha pack that’s following the drops of his blood like bread crumbs. He should know this place better than anyone but right then, his mind muddled by the pain in his side, he can barely see. All he smells is the scent of his own blood like liquid fear. The only thing he hears is the sound of his own heartbeat. He’s completely alone.

He looks back once and that turns out to be his undoing. Derek trips over a tree root and crashes down into soft muddy earth. He tries to get up, struggles onto his hands and knees but can’t get much further. He collapses and lays on his uninjured side, curling in on himself. Derek doesn’t howl, he doesn’t cry for help. 

Leaves crunch on the path to where he lies but Derek doesn’t move. He shuts his eyes and shakes. Thin fingers move through his hair and a gentle voice shushes him. She speaks but he doesn’t understand; her words float away before he can grasp them.

She keeps talking, the words wrapping themselves around Derek and weighing him down. It feels like falling. He hears his name suddenly and he opens his eyes. The night is gone, the forest is gone. He feels like he’s finally stopped falling, like he’s landed. A clock ticks in time to his heart and he settles into the feeling of nothing. There’s no sharp edges, no pain, just soft nothingness. He clutches at the cloth underneath his fingers. There’s so much light in this place. He’s never been anywhere this bright. 

“Derek...?”

He turns his head to the side, chasing a familiar voice, and finds his mom and Laura sitting in two identical green chairs next to his bed. His mom's hazel eyes turn watery and she grasps his hand. Derek feels it. She's so warm and alive.

"Oh my god, Derek, you're awake." She says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song of the chapter: Kingdom Come by The Civil Wars


	2. But I, being poor, have only my dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.” ― Marcel Proust

They tell him he’s been in a coma for a year. They tell him it was an accident. A storm, a slick patch of road, minimal visibility and another car with dead headlights. They tell him he was almost crushed and that the metal of the Camaro had to be peeled away to get him out.

Derek sits up in his bed, pillow fluffed within an inch of its life against his back. Everyone is talking over him and all he can do is try to keep up as the conversation moves from one person to the next. They’re alive. All of them. His dad with his dark hair now graying at the temples. Uncle Peter’s wife Grace with her kind smile and pretty blonde curls bouncing above her shoulders. His little brother Nathan now twelve with wild tufts of hair standing on end and a loose batman t-shirt. Derek doesn’t know what the hell is going on but he’s taking in every last detail of it.

Laura laughs beside him, the sound so familiar that it hurts. She ruffles his hair like she used to when she wanted to get his attention. He turns his head to look at her and her eyes are watching him.

“Only you would be grumpy about waking up from a coma.” She says, teasing. He never was much of a morning person.

“Hi.” He says, simply. He doesn’t know what else to say. He hasn’t talked to her in forever.

“Hey.” She replies, her voice cracking and her face scrunching up as tears fill her eyes.

All he can think about as he looks at her right then is that he’s seen her pale and torn in half, that he had to bury her beside their ruined house in an unmarked grave. It’s a thought that has him averting his eyes and staying silent until visiting hours end and a nurse makes his entire family leave.

Derek doesn’t sleep that night. His mind races over memories of after the fire, of New York and of his return to Beacon Hills. They’re all there and nothing seems to be missing. There’s no gap. He doesn’t dare close his eyes because he doesn’t know what will be waiting for him if he does.

He grips the metal railings on either side of his bed and breathes. In and out. In and out.

*****

When morning light crawls in through his window, a nurse walks into the room but this time Derek recognizes her. Ms. McCall smiles at him and starts preparing to take some of his blood. Derek doesn’t even feel the momentary pinch of the needle piercing his skin before his blood flows into the clear tube.

“Glad you’re back, Derek. Scott was so happy to hear the news.” She says, withdrawing the needle from the inside of his elbow and putting pressure on it with a stark white cotton ball. This gets Derek’s attention because Scott is something familiar. 

“You always were his favorite assistant coach.” She pats his arm sweetly before exiting the room. 

But this life, his life in this waking world is unfamiliar. This is proven even more harshly when his family arrives for another visit and start asking him questions he cannot answer. They involve memory and Derek can’t give them what they want to hear. They all look worried, except Laura, she looked suspicious but she doesn’t say anything. Eventually, he stops answering them altogether and turns away from them when his mom starts to cry. The sound of her sobs is loud but he feels nothing. What the hell is wrong with him?

The doctors come next. Tests are run and he spends the day in and out of bland coloured rooms. Blood is taken, more questions are asked and he lies inside a machine that spins around his head. The tests come back with no new clues as to why Derek is so incomplete. The doctors try to assure his parents that the memories will come back on their own but they don’t look convinced. 

Derek just closes his eyes and pretends to sleep just to avoid their sad looks. He doesn’t care that they can see right through it.

*******

He’s discharged a week later. The various unremarkable doctors marvel at how his muscles never went into atrophy despite his year of sleep. They want him to stay, which is exactly why he really needs to leave.

His parents bundle him into the backseat of their family van. He’s sandwiched between Laura and Nathan but he doesn’t watch the trees blur by the window. Derek keeps his eyes on his hands while his dad watches him through the rearview mirror. The ride is silent; the radio turned off in case Derek wants to make some sweeping move to talk, but he doesn’t want to talk. He wants to be alone. He wants to figure this out. He can’t think straight when they’re around.

The van eventually slows to a stop, the tires skidding on gravel and everyone rushes out of the car. He’s the last one out and he’s shaking a little. Derek hardly remembers what the house used to look like before the fire. He can’t remember if it was made of red or brown brick or if the many windows had shutters. He can’t even recall if they had chairs on the porch.

When his feet touch the ground and he looks up at the house he grew up in, the fuzzy picture in his memory turns clear. The dark green shutters on the windows, the brown brick and the swing and four white rocking chairs on the porch. His bedroom used to be in the attic. Laura shoves him with her shoulder and he looks away.

“You’d think you’d never seen home before.” She says, smiling softly at him.

“I almost forgot it could look like this.” He says, forgetting to stay silent.

Her smile freezes before it falls. Derek walks away as her mouth opens, trying to escape her questions.

“We are so having this talk you’re currently avoiding later this evening or maybe tomorrow, Derek! I will corner you with pancakes if I have to!” Laura’s words chase him down several halls, around corners and up the stairs until he’s in his attic. He shuts the door on them and let’s go of the breath he’s been holding in since he woke up. 

He strips off his leather jacket slowly and takes in his room. There’s light wood floors, a large bed with dark blue sheets, several bookshelves overflowing with books, an old wooden desk with a laptop sitting on it. There are framed movie posters all along the wall from classic hollywood films like _The Big Sleep_ to _The Dark Knight_. There’s even a print of Van Gogh’s _Starry Starry Night_ hanging above his bed. Derek was never really into art but that painting always made something in him swell with feeling. 

There’s colour and life in his room, it’s lived in and permanent. He has a life and he has interests beyond staying alive. In that moment, Derek is confronted with all the things he could have had if he hadn’t been so young and so incredibly stupid. 

He sits down on the edge of the bed and stares out his bedroom window. He tries not to think.

******

Later that night, Laura bursts into his bedroom without so much as a knock. She did that all the time before the fire. After it, they always tried to respect each others space.

“Okay, I am not giving you the pancakes until after you tell me why you’re acting so weird. Tough love, little brother. I know you just woke up from a coma but we’re werewolves, we bounce back gracefully. ”

He ignores her until she drags his desk chair across the room to sit in front of him. The noise scrapes at him like nails on a chalkboard.

“Derek.” She says, her voice laced with command. 

“You’re dead.” He whispers.

“Excuse me? Pretty sure I’m alive since I’m talking to you right this minute. Also? Creepy.” Laura makes a joke but he knows better than anyone that she used to do that when she was scared. It was her knee-jerk reaction to a lot of things.

“Before I woke up. In my head, you’d all been murdered and I was the only one left.” He doesn’t mention Uncle Peter because the thing that slinks around wearing his face is not the man Derek used to know. 

She stares at him. She looks horrified. “Start from the beginning.” She says and so Derek does. He wants to be proven wrong. He wants to believe in the possibility that this could be real. That all the pain, loss and guilt could be swept away because no one should suffer so much and so often and continue to live. He tells her everything up until the moment he woke up. When he’s finished, Laura looks pale and she swallows deeply like she’s about to be sick. She doesn’t say anything for a long time. The clock on his wall ticks loudly between them. 

“Okay, you’re going to have to understand something. You had a crazily intense nightmare for a year, Derek. Those are not your memories. You’re confused right now because you can’t remember a few things but they’ll come back to you,” She takes a deep breath before continuing. “I’m real and this is real. You got me?” She takes his hands in hers and they’re cold and damp with sweat. He feels them though. 

“Okay.” He says but it doesn’t settle his fears or his doubts like all his talks with Laura used to. 

She smiles at him and a chill runs down his spine. They stay up late together that night and Laura tries to fill in all the gaps in his memory. She makes it a point to mention that Kate Argent is a bitch who molested him for six months while she was his 10th grade English teacher. She’s now a registered sex offender and lives in a facility in another state.

It doesn’t make the cold go away.

******

Much later after Laura leaves his room and the house is quiet and still with sleep, Derek lies awake in bed. He can only hear his own heartbeat and it echoes in the deafening silence.

A half moon’s light streams in through his window and tries valiantly to light up the deep dark of his bedroom. He’s fighting to stay awake but his eyes droop heavier and heavier with exhaustion with each passing second. His eyes have just fallen shut when he hears a familiar voice. Derek sits up and listens. It comes again a second later.

_“Derek?”_

It sounds far away, beyond his reach but he knows it. It’s Stiles. Infuriating, annoying, brave, stupid, intelligent, powerful and small Stiles.

_“Where are you, Derek?”_

Derek pushes the sheets off his legs and gets up, rushing through the halls, down the stairs and out the front door. He chases the whisper of Stiles’ voice until he’s in the forest and breathing harshly.

“Stiles!” He yells into the dark but it swallows up his voice and steals it away like he never made a sound. Derek keeps yelling out his name, willing Stiles to hear him and come find him. He feels so helpless doing this and every time Stiles does not reply he feels deeply hopeless.

 _“Derek?!”_ Stiles’ voice is louder this time and it sounds like it comes from every direction. He spins around, looking for him but he isn’t there.

“Derek?” He spins around again and Laura is standing there, looking at him like he’s lost his mind. “What the hell are you doing?” She asks, one eyebrow raised.

“I thought I heard something.” He replies, wondering now if it was all in his head. Wondering if maybe he’s going crazy or if he’s already crazy. The thoughts suck the air from his lungs leaving him breathless and dizzy for a moment. 

Laura laughs a little and offers her hand for Derek to take. He eventually takes it and slowly she leads him back to the house. She locks the door behind them and the click sounds so definite that Derek feels like he’ll never get to leave. The dark washes out everything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs of the chapter: Don't Panic by Coldplay & Your Ghost by Greg Laswell. Listen to the second one especially since it really drove the last half of this chapter.


	3. Those with the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might hurt? Sorry guys. Also, I'm almost done this fic! One more chapter to write.

Derek wakes up the next morning in his strange new bedroom completely confused and decides to figure things out. Maybe Laura was right. Maybe it was all some terrible dream. Or maybe something happened to him that he can’t quite remember and this was all lie. He goes down to breakfast and the dining room is already buzzing noise. There’s laughter and the sound of forks and knives against plates. He walks into the room and everyone quiets down.

“Good morning.” He says. Everyone smiles, especially his mother, and they all say hello. The only empty seat is by his uncle and so Derek takes it even though he feels uncomfortable. He can’t forget the feel of claws in his gut and the heat of him when he was lit on fire. Peter pats him on the shoulder while he bounces what Derek assumes is his daughter on his knee. The little girl squeals when she sees Derek and then proceeds to leave a sticky maple syrup handprint on his grey t-shirt. Derek doesn’t know her name.

“Her name is Violet.” Peter supplies in a soft voice. Derek nods and then proceeds to eat. The food doesn’t taste like it should. It doesn’t taste like anything. It is while he’s ignoring anything but the food in his plate that he notices. There’s only two heartbeats in the room. Derek can hear his own but he can’t identify the other heart. This one beats sluggishly and sickeningly slow like the heart is trying to move through mud.

***********

After breakfast, Derek gets dressed and tries to rush out of the house. His mom stops him in the entry hall in her blue apron.

“Where do you think you’re going, mister?” She looks amused but there’s concern etched in the lines around her eyes.

“To Beacon Hills High? I thought I would visit.” He says. Things are different in this place and he wants to see just how different they actually are.

“Oh, that’s a good idea.” His mom says and visibly relaxes. He knows she thinks this means he’s remembering something. He doesn’t correct her because he needs to go. He needs to get out of this house and find something that will either build this place up or tear it down.

Derek tries for a smile but it’s hard. He knows it comes out more sad than happy. “I’ll walk, okay?” He says.

She nods and ruffles his hair and hugs him close. He hears that gross heartbeat again and he feels colder when he hugs her back. His mother playing with his hair and hugging him too tight are familiar things but this is different. This is darkly possessive and not comforting, two qualities his mother never showed.

***********

Derek makes it to Beacon Hills High ten minutes before the bell rings. The school grounds are littered with people loitering and he scans each cluster of bodies looking for a familiar face.

“Derek? Oh my god, it is you.” Scott barrels into him with a hug and Derek tries stay calm. Scott McCall is hugging him and not trying to beat him up. It’s weird. Scott’s breathing turns erratic and he pulls away suddenly. He shakes a white and blue inhaler in his hand before he puts the plastic to his mouth and inhales. Scott’s hair is long and floppy and he’s human and sixteen years old all over again. He’s untouched and ignorant. Derek doesn’t know this kid.

“I can’t believe you’re here.” Scott says once his breathing is under control.

“Yeah...” Derek says, watching as Jackson, Lydia, Isaac and Allison walk up behind Scott. Stiles isn’t among them. Derek takes a look a quick look at the parking lot but the jeep isn’t parked in any of the spaces. He tunes back into Scott just as he starts talking again, oblivious to the fact something is wrong.

“Are you gonna start coaching again? We couldn’t make it to state this year without you.” Scott says and Jackson scoffs, which isn’t unexpected. The first thing that isn’t so far.

“ I might. Listen Scott, have you seen Stiles?”

“Stiles?” Scott’s face scrunches up with confusion, like he’s never even heard the name before.

And that is when a cold thought suddenly grips Derek by the throat. The answer to all the spaces taken up by different people. Stiles isn’t here. Derek tries to cover it up.

“That kid that tried out with you? The really energetic one.” He says.

“Oh! I think you mean Steven Greenberg? He moved away 4 months ago.” Scott replies, smiling. Happy to be helpful to someone he cares about.

The bell sounds just as he finishes the sentence and Derek is so relieved that there is an end to this conversation that it’s probably written all over his face.

“Right, Greenberg. Anyway, I should let you get to class.” He says, legs twitching with the itch to run. 

Scott tries to go for another hug but Allison thankfully, grabs his arm and steers him towards the doors of the school. Sufficiently distracted, Scott forgets about him and follows her lead.  
Derek turns away and starts running. There’s somewhere else that he needs to be.

***********

When Derek gets to Stiles’ house, it is to find the driveway empty and the house silent and gray. It looks sad compared to the other houses on the block, which have spots of colour and life. This house is a structure that droops and looms but does not offer kindness or shelter. It is whole but falling apart.

Stiles’ window is open and Derek easily climbs through it only for his foot to get caught in an open box. He crashes to the floor and papers scatter around him. He looks around and he’s surrounded by stacks of cardboard boxes and plastic tubs filled with paperwork and files. The walls are bare and immaculate where Derek remembers Stiles’ ridiculous posters used to hang. The room is impersonal and obsessively organized.

He checks the other rooms on that floor but they all contain more boxes except for the Sheriff’s bedroom, which is a complete mess. Derek takes the steps down to the first floor and stops searching for Stiles when he enters the dining room. There in the center of the table is a worn wooden frame with a photograph of the Sheriff and his pregnant wife in it. Beside it there’s a small folded white booklet with a gold cross on it. Derek opens it and there’s another picture of the Sheriff’s wife in it. Underneath it gold lettering reads, _May Helena Stilinski and her unborn son rest in peace._

He sets it back down on the table gently and stands there in the overwhelming silence. Stiles has always had a knack for being there precisely at the time that Derek needs someone most but this time he isn’t. He knows he didn’t make Stiles up. He’s so certain about it because Stiles is layered with hope, joy, honesty, heartbreak, bravery, selfishness and a spark that is his alone. Everyone here pales in comparison to his complexity and they’re all the same. They want to please Derek and reassure him and lull him back to an ignorant sleep. Derek doesn’t want to sleep anymore, he wants to wake up. He feels like he’s close to an answer.

On the way out of the house, Derek sees a box overflowing with empty bottles of whiskey. He thinks that maybe he isn’t the only one who feels displaced because Stiles doesn’t exist here.

***********

It’s when he’s walking back to his family’s house through the woods that he finally remembers.

Derek is walking carefully. The dirt floor of the forest is wet and his feet sink slightly with each step he takes. It’s on one particularly misplaced step where his foot gets swallowed up by an abandoned foxhole that he sees it. There are drops of blood on the ground. Derek quickly gets his foot free and looks for more. Soon enough, he’s following a path laid out in red and it ends in a large patch of blood. It spreads out in a circle in the dirt and it’s bright like it’s fresh. He sees it and remembers the alphas, remembers his wounds, remembers how he laid down to die and let his blood seep into the ground and finally, he remembers the woman. How she sank slowly out of the darkness on her hands and knees, her long fingers digging into the earth and stained dark. Her voice was gentle and cruel and she spoke in a language Derek had never heard before. 

Derek thinks about it, turning over everything frantically in his mind and he only stops when a memory surfaces. He’s 10-years-old and following his mom around their library. They run between the stacks laughing when he knocks over a book, it falls open to a page and he picks it up. He tries to read the word written on the page but fails horribly. His mother smiles down at him, her hair a golden brown in the warm light of the room. 

_“It says Djinn, Derek. Say it with me- Djinn.”_

It was one of the first lessons she taught him. The Djinn, a traitorous creature that looks to prolong its own life by stealing the life of others. It uses the wishes of its victims to trap them.

The old books were always vague and unhelpful. They put a name to the thing but never an end. He tries to remember the other lessons with his mom and falls on one soon after he tipped out the book. It started out with a question, as most of her teaching always did. 

_“How do you wake up from a dream, Derek?” She asked, patient as ever._

_“I don’t know.” Derek replied, confused. He scrunched up his face and waited._

_“When you dream, nothing is real and so the rules of the waking world do not apply. There’s no pain, there’s no true sadness and time stretches on forever. The only way to wake up is to break dream’s rules. You have to die.”_

_“Then why do we have nightmares, Mom?” He had asked. Nightmares are where you felt pain and where you felt sadness and where you could die in a million horrible ways. Derek could not understand. His mother smiled at his question and brushed his cheek with her thumb._

_“To remind us that we’re alive.” She said._

***********

By the time he reaches the house, it’s dark. His family is in the dining room having dinner and laughing. They are cheap replicas of the sounds he remembers and they sound like a recording that will play until the tape dies a slow frightening death. He goes to his father’s desk in his office, tears open the main drawer and breaks through the false bottom with his fist. Pulling the pieces away, he finds the small box of wolfsbane bullets that his father used to keep for emergencies. There’s rows of them here, all of them tiny and gleaming in the dim light from the desk lamp. Derek takes the one he knows will fit in the empty pistol resting on top of the tall bookcase next to the desk. He takes both items and slips out the back door.

He goes back to the red stain in the forest and loads the gun methodically. He wonders for a moment, just a moment, if he’s wrong about all this. The doubt that eats at him in that second is enough time to let the ghosts rise.

“Derek...what the hell are you doing?!” Laura screams. She reaches for the gun but Derek backs away quickly before she can get her hands around the barrel. He steps into the circle of blood.

“I’m going to wake up.” He replies, firmly. 

“You still think this is a dream?” She sounds so scared and her eyes plead with him but he ignores it. “It’s not, Derek. _Please_ , put down the gun.” She’s stands there in the mud in her favorite pajamas. The pants are dark blue with white stars and her t-shirt is a deep red with a gold W across her chest. Wonder Woman was always her favorite superhero. Even after the fire when Derek lost his faith and hope in heroes, Laura clung to hers.

“It is. I know it is.” He says.

“Why? Because you can’t be happy? Does being what we are automatically mean our lives have to be complete shit?” Laura asks and it’s something he’s always wondered. Losing his family over and over again, the constant betrayal, being hunted and never being able to trust anyone. It all came down to what he was but he knows it’s not like that for every werewolf. Unfortunately, Derek isn’t very lucky.

“Mom used to tell me that the difference between the real world and dreaming is that the real world hurts. We feel the fall. There’s nothing here.” Derek raises the pistol to his temple and closes his eyes. He knows he’s right about this. It’s just like the fall before you wake up. It will be that easy. He takes a breath and begins to curl his finger around the trigger.

“Wait!” He hears Laura shout and when he opens his eyes and he’s suddenly surrounded by all his family members that died in the fire. Peter stands there in front of him, whole and not made of ash. 

“All we wanted was for you to be happy. Why couldn’t you just stop?” Peter asks, confused and eyes filled with tears. A small part of him wishes that the lie could be enough. That he could sink into this place, live it until he faded away but he can’t. 

“I’m sorry.” Derek pulls the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song of the chapter: Tom Odell - Can’t Pretend. It's a pretty sweet jam so check it out.


	4. You died, the dream was over, you woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the end. I’m kind of glad it’s done because man, I did not want this fic to be another one of those stories I start and never finish.
> 
> This story was inspired by that one supernatural episode and is dedicated to my friends who encouraged my writing. It may not be good but it sure is...something? Thank you for all your help while I wrote this. Also a thank you to the readers that were excited about this story. You guys gave me a bit more confidence in all this.
> 
> The songs for this chapter are:  
> Bear’s Den - When you Break  
> Sufjan Stevens - For the windows in paradise

Derek slowly opens his eyes to a dark room. He stares at a cracked black ceiling and knows this is where he’s supposed to be. He tries to get up but he’s strapped down to a bed, a thick tight band of rope going across his chest and legs. He hears the barest of sounds and then she’s there, leaning over him.

Her face is thin with sharp edges, her eyes milky white and her hair dark, long and greasy. She runs her cold fingers through his hair and shushes him but Derek is not going back to sleep. He would rather die.

His nails elongate and he lashes out. She screeches horribly and the sound makes him want to scream with how much it hurts his ears but Derek doesn’t stop. He slashes at the rope around his chest, cutting himself open in the process and while it hurts, he doesn’t linger on the pain. She comes at him again and this time, Derek puts his hand through her chest and tears out her heart with a sickeningly wet sound. It’s a black and shriveled thing in his hand and he crushes it under his boot when he drops it to the floor. 

That only seems to make her angrier. She scratches his skin with cracked yellow nails and he doesn’t flinch. Derek cuts across her throat. Her head falls to the ground before her body does and Derek lets out a breath. 

It’s done and Derek feels more exhausted than he’s ever felt in his entire life.

****** 

The sound of another heart beat echoes in the halls of the wrecked place he’s in. It’s small and faint but Derek follows it to a closed door. It’s missing a doorknob so he pushes it open. On a dirty mattress, there’s a girl. Her glazed eyes stare at him blankly and her body lays contorted in an awful way.

Maybe she’s been here longer than him. Maybe she’s been here for less. She’s probably going to die but Derek picks her up anyway and carries her down the hall and out into the night air. 

They’re in an industrial part of town, the kind that usually stays abandoned. It’s a solid three level structure made of red brick with towering black pipes spearing out of its top. The windows are broken, colourful graffiti marking the names of those who have been here. It’s the perfect place to suck the life out of the bones of people until they’re dust. Derek wonders how many people the Djinn brought here. He wonders if the names on the walls belong to the dead.

He turns away from the old red brick factory and starts walking.

****** 

Derek is a few miles away from the hospital when a car stops in front of him. Ms. McCall steps out and the first question passed her lips is accusatory. Scott has probably told her all about him and she stands there unafraid.

“What did you do to her?” She asks.

“I found her.” He says.

Her eyes narrow and she looks him over. He knows what he looks like. He’s covered in blood and his clothes are dirty and ripped. He’s a mess and he looks like every bit the monster Scott probably paints him to be.

“You don’t look too great.” She says slowly.

“She’s dying…I was taking her to the hospital.” Derek adjusts the girl in his arms and holds her closer against his chest.

Ms. McCall’s eyes soften a little. “Help me get her into the car.”

They place her in the backseat carefully and Ms. McCall shuts the door gently. She turns back to Derek but he speaks before she can ask him to come with her.

“You should hurry. _Please_.” He says and she nods. She drives away and Derek watches her car until the red taillights get swallowed up by the black night.

****** 

He wakes up a short time later to a blinding light in his eyes. Derek winces and turns his face away to find Stiles sitting on a metal stool against the wall, tapping wildly at his phone.

“The girl?” Derek manages to say, his voice coming out dry and rough.

Stiles stops and looks up at him. The look on his face is carefully blank. 

“She’s alive but in a coma. The Doctors don’t know when she’ll wake up. Do you think she will?” He says.

“I don’t know. Maybe she’s better off being asleep,” Derek replies, turning away and closing his eyes. He sees red, the light from the lamp light pressing brightly against his eyelids. His skin is hot from pain and exhaustion and he welcomes the coldness that Deaton’s steel examination table offers.

Derek doesn’t know the girl’s story but if it’s anything like his own, it would be the cruelest thing to wake up and realize it was all a lie. To realize that someone used your greatest wish to hurt you. He changes the subject.

“What are you doing here?” Derek asks.

“Ms. McCall called me. You know Scott is on that whole self-improvement streak and she figured that since I was already going to hell that this wouldn’t matter. She sounded…concerned, which is interesting since she politely dislikes you.”

“I’m fine.” Derek bites out.

“Says the guy I found passed out on the side of the road looking like a deep fried twinkie of _death_.” Stiles says, stressing the th sound so much so that the word almost gains another syllable.

Derek doesn’t answer him. He doesn’t know what to say or how to start. Why should he say anything at all when this is so personal? Why does Stiles want to know every horrible thing about him? Does Stiles like seeing all the bloody pieces of the mess that Derek is? Derek swallows the painful angry lump in his throat.

He hears the scrape of metal against tile and opens his eyes just as Stiles leans over him, blocking out the harsh light. It’s as he looks into Stiles’ guiless brown eyes that the anger drains out of him.

“So...what happened?” Stiles asks. He isn’t tentative about the question. “Deaton looks like he’s in the know but he won’t tell me anything lest he break that constant air of mystery that follows him.”

“It was a Djinn.” Derek says, matter of fact and emotionless.

“A genie of the lamp kidnapped you. Correction, an _evil_ genie of the lamp kidnapped you,” Stiles looks like he can’t quite believe it, like the idea is so much more ridiculous than the existence of werewolves. “What did it want?”

“Djinn can’t exist by themselves. This one took to sucking the life out of its victims in order to survive. It made me dream and tried to convince me that it was real.” Derek’s voice cracks on the last word.

“What did it show you?” Stiles asks, the question coming out fast like he just can’t help but say the first thing that comes to mind. It’s not cruel, it’s driven by the need to know what it all means. 

“My family. Like the fire never happened.” Derek says, his voice sounding as wrecked as he felt.

He can hear Stiles’ heart stutter in his chest. He hears him swallow hard, his throat making a clicking sound as it tries to work against the sudden dryness.

“If it was so perfect then how did you know it wasn’t real? This could be a dream right here. This could be Life on Mars, the UK version totally.” 

“It was you.” He says. It comes out quiet. It sounds simple to his ears and it tastes true on his tongue.

“I’m sorry, what now?” Stiles’ squints in confusion. His heart beats loud and fast. Derek lowers his gaze and stares at the exact spot where he knows Stiles’ heart is. When he was dreaming, he could only hear two heartbeats, never the chorus of them like he was used to.

“You didn’t exist in the dream.” Not his heartbeat that was half a second faster than everyone else’s, not his pale face, not his anything. 

“Not even as the Tin Man?” Stiles bites his bottom lip and winces. It’s a stupid joke and Derek doesn’t understand it because Stiles has more heart than anyone else that he knows. The people in his life are lucky to have someone so brave and so loyal. “Sorry. Bad joke.”

“I had everything I wanted.” Derek pauses. The dream world looked perfect but it never felt whole. Stiles not being there was a glaring reminder of that. “Life involves pain so why would I be the one to break the cycle?” 

Stiles’ fists clench around his knees until his knuckles turn white. “You kick Isaac out without a reason. You cut off all contact since Jackson left. It’s been months since I’ve seen you. You were missing for two weeks, Derek, and no one noticed.”

It is the nature of his life that the news doesn’t even faze him, it’s just another fact. Derek may have given Isaac the bite, but he knows who Isaac will choose in the end and it won’t be him. Peter is only loyal to himself and his own ends whatever they may be. Erica and Boyd are missing because of him. Scott will fight him tooth and nail in everything and every alliance will only be temporary. All Derek has are the ghosts of his dead family and a ruined house.

Mistake after mistake, every one more terrible than the last, and it seems like he can’t do anything right. He can’t even make up for what he’s done. Derek is fighting a losing battle against a red tide that will delight in watching him sink and silently starve for oxygen.

“You think I haven’t seen the mark on your door, Derek?” He sounds angry and his cheeks are slightly flushed with it. “That night in the pool you said that you didn’t trust me. I’m asking you to start. I’m not going to let you drown.” Stiles’ mouth trembles as he says this, though he tries to cover it up.

Derek wants to say that he doesn’t need him and that he doesn’t want him but none of that would be true. He wants to be honest for once even if he can’t say the right words.

“Okay. Just you.” Derek says.

Something small like a spark of a smile spreads across Stiles’ mouth. He nods and says, “I can work with that.”

THE END 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my season 3, Derek cuts off all ties with everyone as soon as he realizes the alpha pack is in Beacon Hills and decides to handle them on his own. Stiles is the only one who notices what’s going on.


End file.
